


all creatures, great and small

by bleeckerst



Series: existence in such a form [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1930s, Character Study, Muggle London, POV Tom Riddle, Slice of Life, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleeckerst/pseuds/bleeckerst
Summary: “My name is Tom Riddle,” he tried.The snake did not say anything. It flexed and coiled in neat arcs, like tying a shoelace.“Now tell me yours,” Tom prompted, impatient. He considered poking it with a twig, but thought better of it. Sticks were for dogs and lions, animals whose handlers were calledtamers. Tom remembered that time three Outings ago, when they’d been over Kensington for Bertram Mills’ circus at Olympia, seen the men in the turbans with their little wooden flutes;snakecharmers,they was calling them.
Series: existence in such a form [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070036
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	all creatures, great and small

Tom Riddle liked to peer in and listen and skulk about, and he knew from this that there was a general agreement about Wool’s Orphanage on Church Lane — _not so bad_ , people would say, and then they went on with their lives, and that was London for you. 

Wool’s was certainly no Victorian workhouse — everyone said that orphaned children these days had things good, or as good as it got given the current economic climate and the situation on the Continent, and the Bolshies and the Blackshirts, and all of the rest. The orphanage itself, a big, square, austere, Georgian building, had existed on Church Lane for the past hundred and twenty four years, and no Vauxhall local had seen nothing wrong. God-forbids were all clean enough. Plenty of the decent, pound-noteish sort came in and out with one clutched in their arms or in a carriage or swinging from a shirtsleeve (never Tom). Money came in from the government — some fell into the older children’s pockets (then into Tom’s palms) for sweets and sometimes even trips to the cinema. 

Not so bad.

Himself, Tom knew nothing else than Wool’s Orphanage — number eleven Church Lane, Vauxhall, Lambeth, London — because he had lived there every single minute of his eight and a half years. Actually, his mother had birthed him there. Then she’d gone and popped her clogs right after. Tom had lived at the orphanage longer than anybody, so long that Gracie Mack had tried to gift him the moniker of Permanent Tom about a year back. Tom had rather wanted her to be Permanently Dead, but then a couple from Hampstead ( _All fur coats and no knickers_ , according to loose-lipped Martha) had swept in and swept out with her, and Tom was left where he was.

Tom might have known nothing else, and yes, his clothes were all mended if he couldn’t darn them himself and they had his number on them (B1) so that no other child could accidentally mistake them for his, and he had his own room (Room 27), and they let him out to do errands with the big wicker basket — but he knew _enough_. All that peering, listening, and skulking about told him all he needed to know about how _other_ children — Normal Children, children not from number eleven Church Lane, Vauxhall, Lambeth, London — lived their lives. Tom knew. Their mothers sent them out to play with a kiss on their fat cheeks. Normal Children didn’t have numbers. They probably got wooden toys, though, _all for themselves_ on Christmas day. The richer ones glided down streets on roller skates and bikes, and Tom would throw stones at them. Normal Children probably even got to slide down the bannisters whenever they wanted. 

Normal Children lived in _homes_ , not institutions.

It wasn’t fair, but Permanent Tom had grown up at Wool’s Orphanage and did not believe in fair. Fair was for the new children, and Tom hated the new children. The new children were always solemn and weepy and said words like _fair_ and _unfair_ and _shan’t_ a lot. Oh, how Tom despised them. They made his skin _itch_ and his back teeth grind. He despised them all the more once he’d had the realisation that the new children, unlike him, always began as Normal Children, with mothers and fathers and Christmas pudding and presents. But then mother and father had _died_ , unable to afford the 2/6d to see the doc, and then they understood fair and unfair all the more bitter for it, and were rocked in the arms of Martha or Miss Graves until they quit their _pathetic_ crying. But Tom never did get sick, nor was he rocked in anyone’s arms, and nor did he want to be; Tom was not normal, never would be. 

Tom was far from normal.

<><><>

There was perhaps one day of the year when Tom would be inclined to agree with the general assessment of Wool’s Orphanage. Once a year, in July, when London stripped off its suit-jackets and swapped its slacks for shorts, the coaches came (very publicly and noisily, mind you) to take the orphanage to Southend-on-Sea, or Colne Valley Park or Foulness Island. Tom always felt his blood rushing around on Outing days, and the days leading up to them. Being in the countryside or at the seaside was different to London. Very different. In nature, he could fling his arms out to the side and run as fast as he could, feel the wind whipping through his hair and imagine he had wings and was flying. People tended to think the worst in London. Tom dared to run like that down Lambeth Walk, and people would think him a thief; a whiz boy running away with something he’d nicked.

This year — Tom’s ninth — Ms Clancy and Martha and Father Williams from the church down Church Lane a ways took the children to Colne Valley Park. There was a thrumming excitement the morning of, everyone forgetting themselves and sliding down bannisters and filling the window panes with their faces to peer at the line of coaches outside in the street. Breakfast was wolfed down. Chores were completed hastily. Lunch tins were packed. A line formed in the courtyard, and Ms Clancy paced up and down to see they were all dressed properly. Then there were the coaches, which rattled and stunk. 

Tom Riddle sat alone, preferred it — he always claimed a window seat, so he could press his nose against the glass and watch London flash by. The towers of the new Battersea Power Station scored the blue sky around the bend of the river as they crossed Vauxhall Bridge, and people were thronging on the pavements on Vauxhall Bridge Road as the coach wound its way out of Westminster. Some of the other children kept up a constant squalor all the way there — songs and claps and scrambling all over their seats, acting like complete fools, giggling over all the signs pointing at _Chalfont St Giles_ as they neared the Park _,_ and Billy was subject to a vicious scolding from Ms Clancy for using the words “aris” and “Mrs Cole” in the same sentence. 

The coach sometimes got Tom in a black mood, despite his anticipation — long, loud, hot, smelly, and often made him feel a bit dicky, too — and when it finally rattled to a holt he was first off, stumbling over the ditch and onto the grass. They had never been to this side of the park before, but he instantly preferred it over the lake outing of a few years back. He could see a large river bubbling just over the other side of the coach, which the children were now disembarking, but it looked shallow, uninviting for the raucous kind of splashing and sunbathing that Tom loathed. The air around them teemed with damselflies and whispered with the soft swaying of the wind in the sedge-beds, mingling with the fragrant lilt of meadowsweet. Breathing felt easier. Amidst the jade-green grass, the bluebells were out in full colour, handsome in the mid-morning sun. A trail swept up the side of the road. Tom’s eyes followed it, curving around the tree line before breaching it entirely, splitting the rows of tall oaks invitingly. He wanted to run, to jump, but he would have to be on his best behaviour if he wanted to go wandering off. 

All children — except the new children — knew the protocol for getting off the bus. A long line soon formed from the door. Ms Clancy, a tall, straw-haired woman, originally from America, marched back and forth, rabbiting on about the rules and this and that. Tom hoped there would be no group activities or other silly nonsense of the like, and thankfully his wish was granted. As the youngest children were told to stay with Ms Clancy for the day, the older children were dismissed to roam the surrounding areas, though they were not allowed to go further than earshot.

The silence broke, frenzied footfalls crushing grass and shouts, laughter soon whipping through the air (“Oi! If you’re facing north, what do you ‘ave on your left ‘and?” “Fingers!” “No, you little pest, i’s east, innit?”).

Martha and Father Williams were standing a ways off, angled at each other like a half-finished book face down on a table. Contentedly, Tom set off across the field and slipped into the trees, and nobody noticed.

The woods round this part of the Park were not dense. Plentiful sunlight dappled the swathes of wild bluebells, and the trees were not close enough to hide the large clearing they’d stopped in from Tom’s view when he looked back. The path was overly winding. It seemed more appropriate for the sort of stroll a member of the gentry would take — unhurried and grandiose and pointless—rather than for the adventure of an eight-and-a-half year old boy. Tom found himself cutting through the trees rather than taking the path, uncaring of the nature that his boots stomped upon, bashing branches and low bushes out of his path with his lunch tin. The further he was from the group, the lighter he felt; a small grin began to take over the lower half of his face, and he began to flourish the tin at random, hitting trees with a dull thud, feeling powerful and dominant. 

When he was finally out of earshot, he pressed on, making note of the path’s meandering route through the trees. Though he could navigate easily through the warren of streets that was London, it wouldn’t do to get lost in the woods. He claimed a large, fallen branch and began to trail it against the ground, carving a path he could follow back and, more importantly, looking for unusual points of nature. He’d probably never get as lucky as he had with the cave at Foulness Island, but a good, rotting, hollowed out tree, an abandoned shed, perhaps an animal carcass, would be interesting enough. 

After about three quarters of an hour’s walking, he did discover a rather singular willow tree, just off the path. Its branches hung so low that when he used his stick to bash them aside, he found an almost tent-like enclosure within. A few, small speckles of sunlight threw themselves into the enclosed space like glass marbles into a chalk ring, and it seemed a pleasant enough place to open his tin, he thought. 

Whacking aside the fringe of springy growth, Tom entered the willow’s interior and settled down at the base of the tree. It was rather cold, and dirty, and damp here, but luckily Tom didn’t mind cold, dirty or damp sorts of places. It was a space cut off from the languishing of the path and the cheerful bluebells, private and purposeful. Settling his tin on his lap, he opened it to find the sandwich he’d packed earlier. There was an apple, too, and a few dry biscuits. Nothing exciting. He ate mechanically, enjoying the dappled light flecking the shade. After closing his now-empty tin with a satisfying snap, he dusted himself off and was on his way again. They were supposed to keep the sandwich wrappings to be reused, but Tom trailed out an arm to drop it to the wind, staking his claim on the place. 

The rest of the morning’s exploration yielded nothing but a pitiful stream, a couple of insects scraping half-heartedly across its feebly bubbling surface. Tom rummaged in the banks for a long time, trying to catch frogs, but didn’t find anything. He whacked his branch onto the damp earth for a while, cheeks hot with the effort of the action and a prickling annoyance. 

Then he moved on.

Despite being well out of earshot — and regretting his decision to eat his lunch all at once — Tom decided to continue heading further away from the clearing. He reached the main path again, where the willow bulged out, his sandwich wrapper wavering and caught between its foliage, a little flag for a place he had conquered alone. 

Past the willow, the path gradually seemed to turn somewhere purposeful — no longer did it meander playfully through beds of flowers and sparse oaks. Now it was thinner, more or less straight, and the woods’ shades of green seemed to close in on either side. Tom broke into a run, enjoying the feeling of solid earth beneath his boots, the rush of air in his ears, the cool breeze ruffling his hair. He took deep, gasping breaths. Whooped. Threw his arm back and javelined his stick through the air with a violent burst of power.

Ran on.

There was a distant crack as the stick landed, and Tom closed his eyes, imagined he was in the Great War and an enemy was pursuing him. A thrill of exhilaration spurred him on, making his ragged breaths catch. He was sprinting through woods somewhere in Germany. His pursuer was armed, but Tom was fast; faster; fastest. There was no catching Tom. Glancing down through his eyelashes and feeling a sudden ease of the effort of running, he realised the path had hit an incline. Tom snapped his eyes shut and held out his arms and he flew, he was flying—

—he felt his left boot kick into something brutally solid — 

—and he overbalanced, flew forward, and landed, sprawling, pain coursing through his knees, the palms of his hands smacking into the dirt. His shin bumped abruptly into a hard, narrow surface. 

Gritting his teeth, hissing some of the filthiest swearwords he’d overheard while snooping about the distillery, Tom pulled himself up onto his knees and wiped his prickling hands. Glancing back furiously, he noticed a large branch just behind him, fallen across the path. He glowered at it. Beyond him, his tin lunchbox had gone flying, had landed in a bush a few yards away. 

His limbs still aching, and the jarring sensation of having fallen still settling in his stomach and making his heart pound, Tom crawled forward to reclaim it.

It was a quick flash in the corner of his eye, a small movement at the base of the bush — that was all. But something—perhaps a flicker of leftover adrenaline—made Tom take a second glance. 

His eyes widened.

A thin, slinky creature. Little blackcurrant eyes. A dark tongue, darting out, darting in. It’s scales were a sanitary green with black accents, like a Fairy soap wrapper. Green was Tom’s favourite. 

He felt his face splitting in two, teeth on display, a small graze on his right knee stinging as he bent down to look.

“ _Hullo_ ,” he said.

The snake’s tongue flickered. “ _Hello_.”

Tom couldn’t help the way he jerked back, the rubber soles of his boots grappling with the dirt. For a moment, he almost thought he might have imagined it. Animals liked him — they were simple, like humans, you gave them a bit of what they wanted and they would do as you bade them. But an animal had never talked back to Tom before. Eyes widening, Tom leant forward again, wiping the seat of his pants as he did so. 

“ _My name is Tom Riddle_ ,” he tried. 

The snake did not say anything. It flexed and coiled in neat arcs, like tying a shoelace. 

“ _Now tell me yours,_ ” Tom prompted, impatient. He considered poking it with a twig, but thought better of it. Sticks were for dogs and lions, animals whose handlers were called _tamers_. Tom remembered that time three Outings ago, when they’d been over Kensington for Bertram Mills’ circus at Olympia, seen the men in the turbans with their little wooden flutes; _snake_ _charmers_ , _they was calling them_.

But he would bet his entire rock collection no snake charmer he’d ever seen had made a snake talk _back_ to him. This had to be part of Tom’s specialness. It had to.

“ _Does it mean to harm us? To maim? To kill?”_

Tom considered — no, he decided graciously.

“ _No_ ,” he said. “ _Has somebody tried to do that before_?”

The undergrowth sizzled under the snake’s belly as it slithered closer, agitated. Tom watched as it slid nearer and nearer, nosed up onto the toe of his boot, became a subtle weight upon his shoelaces. Carefully, he wrapped his fingers around his ankle. He wasn’t surprised to feel—though it was a little jarring—the sensation of smooth, cool scales winding around his wrist. 

“ _Am I a snake?”_ Tom wondered, not caring if it were foolish. He knew he was different. He knew it wasn’t normal for a snake to talk to him, to be on his arm. He held the limb still and away from himself, like he was checking a wristwatch, as the snake circled his forearm. It was not an unpleasant sensation, Tom decided, rather reminding him of a human pacing in thought. 

“ _You are a human.”_

Tom frowned. “ _But I’m different. I can talk to you. I’m not normal. I can’t be.”_

“ _You are different.”_

 _“How can you understand me?”_ After all, he was quite certain that snakes did not have the physical characteristics necessary to talk like humans did. In fact, as he peered at the small jade head, he realised— _“You don't even have ears!”_

It suddenly occurred to Tom that it may have something to do with the way he could climb into other people’s thoughts sometimes, if he really wanted to — feel them rattle around him like a jarful of pear drops. Perhaps the brain of a snake was not dissimilar to that of a human, or, at least, not dissimilar to Tom’s? Perhaps Tom could ask Mrs March… or, better yet, amuse the bookstore woman, one had the eye missing…

Tom look down into the little beady eyes, his own moony face reflected in their black depths as he gazed and gazed as hard as he could. 

_Let me in_.

Nothing. 

_“You have a name?”_ he asked it. It seemed important to know; names could tell you a lot about a person. 

The creature slid its way onto Tom’s upper arm, wound around his sleeve, level with his face. Tom forced himself not to blink. _“I am known as Pretty_.”

_“Who gave you that name? Was it another snake?”_

The snake stopped moving. _“I bestowed it upon myself.”_

_“Oh. Do you have any friends?”_

_“No. A snake is a solitary creature. I hatched alone. I will die alone.”_

_“Oh. Well, what was you doing just now?”_

_“Hunting.”_

_“Hunting what?”_

_“Prey.”_

_“What prey?”_

_“Toad is tasty. Frog is fine.”_

Perhaps that explained why Tom hadn’t found anything by the stream just now. The snake was very near to his face — its tongue kept darting out, just into the edge of Tom’s vision where things got _too_ close, too blurry.

 _“Do you eat humans?”_ In his mind’s eye, he saw himself learning over the balcony at church, throwing a long, fanged creature into the rows of hair-combed children with hands clasped; the screams, the shins banged against seats in the haste to run. 

He grinned. 

_“No.”_

Tom’s vision faded.

 _“Really?_ ” Oh, better yet— _“I could give you some of the younger orphans. They’re quite small.”_

The snake’s tongue flickered. _“A snake does not eat a human. Humans will eat a snake, yes?”_

_“No.”_

_“You lie. I have seen the maimed bodies of my kind. The humans leave them upon the trail.”_

Tom glanced quizzically behind him, thrown. _"What, that path there?”_

_“No, ignorant human. A large trail. Hot. It rumbles.”_

Tom’s face grew hot. He was _not_ ignorant; just taken aback, was all. He thought hard about what the snake might mean — what rumbled? 

“Oh,” he said, as the answer dawned upon him, “I know. _That big road, then, the one we came down on our way here.”_

They had been laying the new bypass last time the orphanage had come to Colne Valley, replacing the dirt road with something newer that was supposed to withstand all the new holidaymakers and their motorcars. Tom remembered pelting his apple core out the window at the men in overalls when Ms Clancy was looking the other way. The old roads out here had rattled the coach and made his head ache. The new road was much better.

The snake was silent. Perhaps it didn’t understand.

_“The road is the long trail that comes out London. It's for motorcars and the like. That's why the snakes died. They were run over by the wheels.”_

The snake watched him, it’s little eyes beady and shiny. “ _There is a large river on the other side. It is dangerous for a snake to cross. There is prey there.”_

 _“Oh.”_ Tom paused. 

A thought had occurred to him, twisting its funny, dark tendrils into the sides of his brain. 

_“I was just down the river_ ,” he said, voice even, _“and there was lots of things to eat. Frogs and all sorts. I can take you across, you know."_

The snake hissed, and Tom jerked his head back. _“I do not take aid from humans!”_

_"I'm not humans!”_

_“You are a human.”_

_“How can I speak with you, then?”_

_“I am unsure. I do not communicate in this way. It is irregular. Uncomfortable.”_

Tom frowned. _“You’re being silly. Stop it. I will take you where you want to go. You can trust me. I bet none of the humans who ever killed a snake could talk to them.”_

Silence. The snake was still for a while.

 _“I will consider it,”_ said the snake, at last.

Tom glanced up at the sky, at the way the tree shadows were lengthening across the path, the way the light that scored their leaves was turning golden.

_“Well, you ought to do it quick, then. I think it's almost time to leave. And then you'll have to cross on your own, and you might be crushed under a car. You'll be wishing you came with me then.”_

He kept his arm steady as the snake craned forward — out of focus, now, a green blob in the centre of his vision. 

_“I will accept your help.”_

_“Good,”_ said Tom. Snakes were rather simple after all, he thought.

He tugged his lunch tin closer with his free hand, lowering his arm toward it. 

The snake coiled down his arm; he watched the way the sunlight rippled over its sleek, scaly sides. Its skin was tough, dry to touch. They made shoes and hats and all sorts out of snakeskin. Tom had seen it.… _might fetch three pounds, pr’haps even a Lady Godiva…_

_“You'll have to go in here. I expect the others would go milky around snakes.”_

…But only if it proved to be boring, of course. 

<><><>

Tom expected the snake would be displeased if he wasn’t careful with it — it might even try to bite him — so he kept the tin as steady as he could as he jogged back up the path, careful to watch out for any insolent branches this time. A glance up at the sun’s slow melt to the left told him it was nearing mid-afternoon, and Ms Clancy was always annoyingly strict about punctuality. 

The path begun its irritating wind again, and Tom cut through the undergrowth to save time. His legs stung with scrapes and bruises were budding on his knees from the fall, but there was no time to dawdle. He picked his way carefully through the woods, and, surely enough, came across the weeping willow again. His lunch scraps must have blown away, the wrappings no longer there. 

It was very lucky for Tom that this morsel of imagery had slowed his pace, for not a moment later was there a general rusting in the direction of the willow tree. A giggle. Then, the branches whispered brashly as two figures spilled out from underneath.

Tom ducked behind the nearest tree.

Lowering himself, and carefully peeking out from around it, he was greeted with the sight of Martha flouncing onto the path. A lock of her hair had escaped her up-do and was plastered wetly to her forehead; a soft patina of earth stained the skirt of her dress like the big smoke clouds that rose from Brand’s factory on South Lambeth road. Behind her, Father Williams staggered, a gay smile about his jaw and his shirt gaping open.

Still giggling, Martha spun around, grabbing the man’s hand.

“You’re very modern, aren’t you?” she leered.

The man murmured something Tom didn’t catch, and they did that crinkly-nosed laugh that adults did. Martha’s hands wandered up onto Father Williams’ chest, her fingers fiddling with the buttons. Father Williams bent double at the waist and pretended to fight her, but not hard, because she was a lady and it was just a joke. He grabbed her waist and turned them around. 

Tom ducked his head back behind the tree. It took a while, but soon their puppyish laughter and the crackling of leaves and grass underfoot were gone, fading away. The afternoon light had softened in their wake. 

It was time for Tom to go, too.

He traipsed back to the clearing, only once cracking open his tin to check on the scaly coil before he reached the others. Just a peek. He caught a flash of black eye and shut the lid quickly. He did not want to speak to it again — not yet.

He pondered what it all meant. The limits of his abilities never ceased to confuse or irritate him, were always brushing him with that rumbling, prickly feeling in his stomach and his cheeks. None of it seemed to ever make any sense. 

Why had it been the snake he could talk to? Why snakes? Why not the floppy-eared stray dogs that grazed their ribs slipping through the gates of the orphanage courtyard, went sniffing about the kitchen door for scraps? Or the alley cats with scaly fur, or the little grey mice they dived and darted after? Something about the question felt important. Tom hated the idea of just leaving it hanging up in the air unanswered, like a pair of knickers left to dry.

He slipped along the snaking path, careful to stay behind Martha and Father Williams, who, from the pinpricks of gay laughter and shuffling up ahead, kept dilly-dallying. Then, at last, he was breaking through the line of trees and emerging into the clearing again — where a pack of older boys were running around mell-pell, and the other children were milling about in the vicinity of the bus, a half-hearted game of _the Farmer Wants a Wife_ in process.

“There you two are.” To his left, Ms Clancy was striding toward Martha and Father Williams, her long face red-tinged. “Any more stragglers, then?”

“No, Ms Clancy,” Martha chirruped, like the terrible gillflirt she was.

On Tom’s way across the grass to the coach, a small flash of grey-brown whizzed in front of his legs, and a boy darted out in front of him, chasing it. 

“Sorry,” he yelped.

Tom, glaring, watched him flail forward like a puppet whose strings had been hacked, flattening himself upon the ground. Fools, the lot of them.

The boy — Billy — continued to make a production of himself as they all piled back onto the coach. Billy Stubbs was a big, round, red-cheeked, athletic sort of boy who seemed perpetually winded and breathed through his mouth, so that when he spoke he snorted a bit and sounded as if he’d caught the flu. He had been at the orphanage the last three years, and whenever there was an Outing he always made a game of throwing rocks at birds and wildlife. Tom saw him stow something quivering and soft under his shirt as he hopped on the bus. Martha, cackling about something to Father Williams, did not see this. 

Arms wrapped around his lunch tin and straight-backed, Tom ended up being the last in line to board. Just as he was about to step up into the coach, something tugged at his sleeve, and when he turned around, it was Martha. She was wringing her hands. Martha always got odd around Tom — like everyone else, Mrs Cole had apparently convinced her he was some sort of wide-boy, always up to no good even when he wasn’t. It was highly annoying.

“Turn your pockets out for us.”

Tom did. Nothing but gullyfluff came out. He made his eyes wide as he peered up at her, tried to put the Oliver on. She pursed her lips. She gestured quickly at his lunch tin with her head, the stray lock of hair bouncing.

“Let’s have a butcher’s, boy.”

Tom shook his head, hugged it to his chest. She made a grab. Tom was quicker. 

“Give it here, Tom. Or else it’s not going on the bus. You hear me?”

For a moment, he thought to refuse. 

“ _Give_ _it_.”

But then, fleetingly, a nasty little scene entered Tom’s mind: a shrill scream; a long, swaying, hissing rope attached to Martha’s lumpy nose. He handed the tin over slowly. Martha flicked the latch. It opened. 

With a sound like a boiling kettle, she smacked it shut again. 

“ _What in heaven’s name_ , Tom?”

“That’s Pretty,” said Tom.

“That— was you actually thinking you could take that home with you?” 

“Yes.”

“Oh, for—“

And she whipped the tin high and powerful into the air and over the clearing, uncaring of Tom’s shriek of anger and surprise. 

“ _NO!”_

 _“Inside,_ boy. Now. _”_

Tom was blinded; heat whipped through him, and for a short, hot, shaky moment, a wiry torrent of _something_ felt like it was about to burst out of him — for another moment, he thought it had, when the stray lock against Martha’s forehead and the collar of her shirt rustled as if by a phantom wind. He glared at her with all his might — he thought of terrible, awful things, of legs being punctured by barbed-wire and cut off in booby traps, of people bleeding and dying and being creased and chased, of tanks firing and lions snapping, and he tried to scoop all of the energy and terror inside him and puncture through her eyes with it, to enter her thoughts and assail them. 

She snapped her gaze away; raised a shaky hand to her face and glanced around.

“Martha?” It was Ms Clancy, hanging through the coach window. “We going?”

“Just a minute, Ms Clancy.” Martha breathed hard. “Tom dropped his lunch tin in the grass. I’m going to get it.” She jerked her head furiously in Tom’s general direction, “Get. On.”

He did. There was a single seat left beside Father Williams. Martha came back a minute later with his tin, the lid gaping pointedly open, dropped it on the floor beside his seat with a dull _clang_. 

The coach pulled away from the clearing. Ms Clancy led a group of little kids in waving the Park goodbye. 

Tom folded his arms across his chest and stared directly ahead. To his left, Father Williams had taken out a book and was reading. Tom’s stomach curdled like milk to look at him, but he couldn’t help sneaking peeks at the mismatched buttons, the gossamer shroud of sweat that clung to the lumpy, receded head, white in the weighed-down sun. Tom knew that Martha was twenty-three and Father Williams was a man people would say was “getting on”, and he knew that Father Williams was married and that he was a man of God. Father Williams was always there, every Sunday, and they all had to call him Father like they weren’t orphans, and he looked down at them from the pulpit and told them to listen to what God was telling them, to what God said.

Well, _what_ _God said_ was that adultery was a sin. Tom was no innocent fool. He knew exactly what Martha and Father Williams had been doing — sex. That’s what they’d been doing. 

God, and Church, and the rest — it was all just as much a performance as the circus at Olympia. A performance like anything else that people did to be accepted, to be Normal — giving gifts and being _noble_ and charity. No one actually _meant_ those things. It was plain as day — even Father Williams was paying it no mind, as soon as the prying eyes lifted and he got himself a mort under a willow. Church was lies, lies people told themselves to make themselves feel better; more powerful; more in control.

It was all lies, and nobody could see it, nobody but Tom — they were all so _stupid_.

If there _was_ a God, Tom thought, He was just like Tom, and He spared no empathy for crying or pleas or fair. Why would He? To be powerful was to be above such things. What use were gifts or sacrifice or love when one was omniscient; above everyone else; _permanent_?

Father Williams’ voice came from Tom’s left. “Any hymn requests for service tomorrow, boy?”

“ _All Things Bright and Beautiful_ , Father,” said Tom, and he closed his eyes. 

<><><>

Tom had been awoken three-quarters of the way back to London, at which point another barney had begun to play out; Ms Clancy had discovered a stow-away rabbit at the back of the coach. All one could do was squeeze their eyes shut against the force of the argument, which, in a wild cacophony of bell-like squeals, shrill, nattering voices and the resounding clap of palm on face, had made Tom’s head hurt something fierce.

“Right. That’s it. Turn this coach around. This instant — now!”

“…He can’t do it, Ms Clancy…” Martha’s voice had drifted, slightly out of breath “…he says we’ve got a budget for the petrol, see…“

To which had followed a certain amount of grunting and snapping in American tones.

Later, they gave Billy the leather strap, pre-soaked in vinegar, hunched in the middle of the courtyard under the plane tree. When the air chilled later that evening, Billy’s gang milled around the tree, and they took turns holding the rabbit against their freezing fingers. They laughed when the little hind legs kicked up, fruitlessly trying to remove the thick green ribbon they’d wound around it’s mid-section, and Tom watched from his window as it sniffed and nibbled at the sections of weed that popped up here and there, at the dried leaves strewn by small children with clumsy fists.

By the gate, Martha waved Father Williams off, and the Father raised his hand in return and one finger winked in the sun-fragments of dusk. And Tom Riddle watched his progress down Church Lane, around the curve of the street and out of sight, but off to stand beneath the white spire that rose up above the other buildings and have a word with God, probably.

And Tom considered combing his curls into two, church-pew rows and singing about the _rich man in his castle_ and the _poor man at his gate,_ the following morning. His stomach rolled. He followed Martha’s advancing figure with his eyes; she mopped her hands against her skirt and scratched her red nose with two fingers, the crack of a smile underneath them. Tom watched her go in the direction of the kitchen.

She would be alone there. 

Tom rolled up his sleeves. It was high time they had a word about Tom’s attendance of Sunday school, going forward. He’d had quite enough of lies. For a moment, he rather wished he had the snake with him, but Tom Riddle liked to peer in and listen and skulk about, and he knew from this that a tongue, if wielded precisely enough, could wreak far greater damage than a pair of needle-sharp teeth. 

After a final, vicious glance outside, where Billy Stubbs and the others were giggling and passing the rabbit back and forth, Tom pulled away from the window, preparing himself to work the black. He ought to thank Martha, really. Tomorrow, he would be needing the orphanage empty for a while.

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to know how Tom knew he was a Parselmouth when he got out of town, like, once a year. Then I lost control and I spent 6,000 words luxuriating in the 1930s! Then I wanted more Tom so I wrote a sequel! Yay!
> 
> Disclaimer: I did research into 1930s England for this fic, but I am neither English, nor was I alive in the 30s. Please correct me if you are an English historian or octogenarian.
> 
> Other disclaimer: Tom Riddle is fictional. JKR’s recent transphobic sentiment is not, and her opinions do not align with my own.


End file.
